For the (RED) Leica M, the designers took the classic look of the famed Leica series, and turned it into a sleek, modern, Apple-worthy product. "The Leica object embodies the most iconographic qualities of a camera," Newson said in a video (below). "It ended up being kind of a process of distillation and sort of concentration."

Carved out of a single block of aluminum, the Leica M for (RED) features more than 21,900 laser-engraved holes, which work double duty as added aesthetic appeal and a grip for the handler. Clearly a departure from the classic leather-bound Leica, this camera includes more than 100 tweaks from the original 2012 Leica M.

"There have been a lot of challenges to change the design," Stefan Daniel, Leica's director of product management, told PCMag in a Friday interview. Standing beside the encased device (below), Daniel called the workable camera "really something special."

In the works since December, the modernized Leica M took more than 50 engineers more than 270 days to build; the outer shell's holes alone took 97 hours to precisely engrave.

"We wanted it to be light. We didn't want to make it from brass; we wanted to make it from aluminum," Ive said in the video. "We used the most advanced tools that we possibly could to make it. We've made prototype after prototype, and spent so much energy making this, as if we were going to make millions of them. But we're only going to make one."

The (RED) Leica M was estimated to pull in between $500,000 and $750,000, but surpassed expectations with more than $1.8 million. Estimates on the (RED) Mac Pro, meanwhile, were put at $40,000 to $60,000, but neared $1 million with $977,000.

On Twitter, Sotheby's said that a "battle for pair of solid rose gold EarPods ... brought $461k to rounds of applause." The listing originally estimated that they would fetch between $20,000 and $25,000.

About the Author

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications. See Full Bio